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Sovereignty

In Our Time: Philosophy

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The Transfer of Power

The people are a disunited multitude. They only obtain their unity by being embodied through the transfer of power to a sovereign. The tricky bit is, how do you get the people to do that? And what are the laws saying that the people you should do this and give all your natural rights away and let it be with? Hobbes has two ways of thinking about that. He says one way is that we imagine the people sort of gathering together and actually doing it. But he also has a de facto route to sovereignty, where we look at someone who in fact has become able to provide protection for us. I think that's really the critical political argument. We're still in theory.

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